


Glissade

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Era, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Missing Scene, Political Expediency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Having read enough of fragile ingénues who were rendered weak at the knees by men with Enjolras’ mercurial mixture of charm and command, Marius was displeased – though wholly unsurprised – to find himself among their number.</i>
</p><p>Marius and Enjolras clash again after their first meeting and end up in a politically-charged clinch. Enjolras/Marius with Courfeyrac/Marius if you squint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glissade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [within_a_dream](https://archiveofourown.org/users/within_a_dream/gifts).



Marius often came close to congratulating himself on how far he had travelled since leaving his grandfather’s house. In a short space of time, he had discarded his family name, discovered an atmosphere in which he was able to think, speak, and breathe more easily than he could remember ever being the case, and gained acquaintances – even if he now appeared to have alienated most of them just as swiftly – who had unfixed his faith and opinions and who evidently held nothing sacred in politics, theatre, love or philosophy. It gave him an odd kind of comfort to picture his relatives’ horror at the dissolute depths he was presently plumbing, but the evening just past had seen Marius astonish even himself. 

“After these first few days in your company,’ he sighed, giving voice to his thoughts as he glanced across the table at Courfeyrac, “I had not thought my horizons could be broadened any further, and yet – ”

And yet, in the past few hours Marius had been shaken to his core not only politically, but… He took another mouthful of wine in order to continue.

“Astounding,” was Courfeyrac’s verdict on the story Marius had told so far. “I’d never have thought – were you drunk? Ah, but even had you been, Enjolras is hardly likely to have the same excuse to hand. I’ve only known him drink this past year when marking the death-date of Rousseau. So, Marius, how did you find yourself in these particular straits? And so quickly after I’d abandoned you, too?”

*

How _had_ he found himself here? He had not, as it happened, drunk much more than was usual that evening, though the effort and spontaneity of delivering his catastrophic Bonapartist intervention to the room at large had left him, by its end, more light-headed than any wine had previously done. 

In any case, realizing that he was alone with Enjolras gazing gravely at him in the suddenly emptied back-room had done much to propel Marius towards sobriety. As he stared at the pinned-up map of France, pondering its contours, Marius was conscious of Enjolras raising himself from the table with a languid grace and crossing to the door, which he slid shut softly. 

Raising his eyes to the smoke-stained plaster of the ceiling, as though silently praying for deliverance, Marius felt Enjolras' hand on his shoulder. 

"Citizen," said Enjolras, "my mother is the Republic." 

While he wondered what on earth he was to make of that particular admission, Marius turned to look at him. 

Enjolras at close quarters was even more arresting than he had looked all evening with the distance of the room between them. The piercing blue of his eyes and the resolute set of his plush upper lip, that fine unblemished brow, his golden curls against his stiff white collar were… many words were coming to mind, but the one which won out was _provocative_ , Marius realised. Being face-to-face with the man was provoking him to rifle through his recent speech for anything that might be salvaged and used to draw Enjolras into a further exchange of fire. He felt light-headed again with the urge to prove himself Enjolras’ equal, but also the competing need to win his approval. 

Enjolras had released his grip on Marius’ shoulder but remained, Marius thought, unnecessarily adjacent. The last – in fact, more or less the only – occasion that Marius had been in such close proximity with another man had been his spontaneous embrace of Courfeyrac on their initial meeting, when expressing thanks for his generosity. His new friend had been all warmth and openness where Enjolras was inhospitably chiseled from marble and ice. Nevertheless, there was something in each man that Marius found attractive at a level he was unwilling either to name or acknowledge. He bit his lip and waited for Enjolras to cease regarding him solemnly and speak. 

“Tell me, how did you and Courfeyrac come to meet? I trust the man completely, but he has his occasional caprices and I would like to assure myself you are not one of them.”

At this, Marius bristled. “Clearly he finds me, whatever else I may be, an acceptable offering to you.”

“He can’t have known of your politics, then,” came the instant rejoinder. “We’ve little use for any admirer of that autocratic parasite wrapped in the flag of the worker-bee – ” 

“Oh – ”

They had, almost at once, reached the point where a clash of swords was unavoidable. Marius straightened his back, drew breath, and leapt into the conversational fray in defence of Bonaparte, his father, and France’s imperial glory. 

“ _Monsieur_ , you cannot be referring to – ”

In the dispute that followed, Marius found himself arguing at the limits of his experience, knowledge and articulacy, almost losing breath between the declamations and debating points he made and deflected, just about adequately parrying his opponent’s counter-attacks and only just preventing Enjolras’ words from drawing blood. His eyes darted repeatedly to the map on the wall, as though the sight of Corsica could summon some assistance, inspiration, or protective enchantment. When he next steeled himself to meet Enjolras’ eye, he saw the other man’s expression had, impossibly, grown more intense. 

Enjolras, his breathing slightly ragged and a delicate flush to his cheeks, fell silent as he leaned closer and trailed a hand over the fabric of Marius’ cravat and collar. With a look of focused concentration, he stroked surprisingly warm fingertips across the bare nape of his neck, and then destroyed the already faltering point that Marius was making by winding his fingers into Marius’ hair with a weight and a decisiveness that brooked no argument, and pressing his lips to his before Marius could utter his concluding lines. 

The kiss appeared to last both a split second and several hours. When they stepped apart Marius staggered, feeling his back hit, with some grim symbolism, the wall on which the map of France was pinned. 

Having read enough of fragile ingénues who were rendered weak at the knees by men with Enjolras’ mercurial mixture of charm and command, Marius was displeased – though wholly unsurprised – to find himself among their number. When thinking of his father he had sometimes wondered if enlisting, with its life of structure and routine, its opportunity to follow orders, might provide a kind of balm for his own restless and overactive tendencies, might soothe the perennial crises of identity he faced. Marius had never appreciated being given unwanted instruction, but there was a certain level of command that he had long thought he might find validation in obeying. These considerations had been wholly theoretical, until now. 

“Any leader, however charismatic, however _glorious_ , is merely a means to an end,” Enjolras was saying, softly but with the habitual glint of steel. “Any leader is merely a channel for the sovereignty and will of the people. No leader is to be blindly, unthinkingly worshipped.” 

Looking intently into Marius’ eyes, Enjolras inclined his head as though receiving the answer to a question Marius had not heard him ask. Then, with Marius’ back pressed against the map of France, Enjolras kissed him again, slowly this time, with an alarmingly open mouth and both hands clutching Marius’ shirtfront. 

Marius was conscious of being an unwitting participant in some unaccustomed contest of will. His transgression, he now saw, had been to give away his position so soon, betraying that his political evolution was not as far evolved as the rest, and then to assert his own position as superior. He should, instead, have demonstrated his humility. 

Marius placed one hand at Enjolras’ hip, and tangled the other in the silk of his hair, with greater reticence and more care than he could recall applying to anything in his life. Enjolras smiled against his mouth and brushed a purposeful hand over the buttons of his waistcoat. 

Perhaps he was drunk after all. Perhaps they both were. When Enjolras stepped away again, biting his lower lip and looking at Marius with a contemplative expression, the first way of making amends that occurred to Marius was to drop to his knees on the café’s bare floorboards. 

When he raised his eyes, disarmed entirely, he found Enjolras gazing down. His lips still slightly parted, he clenched one alabaster hand in Marius’ dark curls.

“Pontmercy, I would like you to be welcome here, but you cannot cling to claiming a position of political neutrality. Our aim is freedom, and not the co-option of popular strength by the swine who already hold power –”

He pressed the fingertips of his free hand to Marius’ lips, as if to check he was still breathing. Marius fought the impulse to draw them into his mouth and suck.

“And you must realise – Courfeyrac will support me on this point – that in times like these a good name is nothing but a badge of dishonour.” 

His eyes falling shut, Marius shivered, taking more pleasure in hearing Enjolras denigrate his background than his grandfather had ever inspired by urging him to take pride in it. He wondered whether he was merely exchanging one idol, not yet proven to be false, for another. Then he opened his eyes and looked up, trying to clear his mind of thinking, and answered breathlessly:

“Instruct me, then, _mon ami_. Correct me – show me my place.”

A flash of mutual understanding passed between them as Enjolras raised an eyebrow. 

“I see,” he said, and slipped his hand from Marius’ hair.

By the time he brought the flat of his hand back down Marius was more than prepared, tilting his head so that he almost dived into the impact. The sting of Enjolras’ palm against his cheek, repeated twice as Marius arched his back and gasped appreciatively between each blow, was at once gentle and as sharp as the slap of a dueling glove.

“Your place is with the people,” said Enjolras.

Marius nodded, feeling several stages past either drunk or light-headed. He leaned forward and placed his hands, with reverence, on Enjolras’ thighs.

“You may be assured of my commitment,” he said gravely, thinking that he sounded quite as reckless and absurd as he felt. 

“Then there is nothing between us but friendship,” said Enjolras, his fingers deftly working down the buttons of his fall-front. 

Dazzled, his mind full of marble and gold, Marius closed his eyes and pictured a succession of scenes in which he saw himself as Briseis in bondage to Achilles, or else as Persephone on her knees before Adonis – until finally, in an image which swept all others before it, his point of view became that of some anonymous Convention delegate, their name long lost to history, gazing up at the ruthless and radiant face of Saint-Just in ’93. 

And then, discarding fantasy for a here-and-now that scarcely seemed real, Marius passed his tongue over his lips, tightened his grip, and brought himself back to the matter at hand. 

*

“And then - ?” said Courfeyrac avidly, sitting forward with his hands clasping his knees in an almost comical air of anticipation.

“And then… you know, Courfeyrac, you are far more a man of the world than I am. I’m sure you are able to complete the tale yourself.” 

There was in fact barely anything left to tell. The matter had ended as though a spell had been broken, or a fever-delirium lifted. 

Enjolras, austerely buttoned-up again, had given him a brief smile, terse but with a definite look of honour satisfied, and offered Marius his hand to help him to his feet. He had given a nod of farewell, expressed the hope that Marius would return to the Musain the following week, and then left the back-room as Marius was still brushing the dust off his knees. Marius had listened to Enjolras’ footsteps descending the stairs while regaining his breath, with the desperation of a drowning man pulled at last onto land. 

He did not quite feel able to tell his friend this – or perhaps it was simply that he wished to keep one moment for himself. He gave a final shrug and watched as Courfeyrac, looking only slightly disappointed, divided the last of the wine between both of their glasses. 

“Well, I’m pleased to have helped you unburden yourself to this extent at least. And has this interaction, in fact, done anything to alter your political opinions?” 

“No,” said Marius, out of sheer stubborn instinct, but then – had it? – he turned the question over in his mind. “Or – only in that I am now convinced there may be more to things I should consider.” 

Courfeyrac nodded – mostly, it seemed, to himself. 

“For Enjolras this is certainly unorthodox, but I cannot fault his dedication or his lateral thinking.”

“I am unsure if you are mocking me,” said Marius stiffly.

“Not at all – like any priest worthy of the office, Enjolras is devoted to increasing the flock by any means at his disposal. This is merely a more striking example than most.”

“I shall say goodnight to you, then,” said Marius with a sigh. “The time for retiring is long past.”

Courfeyrac stood, unsteadily, and made an affectionate swipe at Marius’ shoulder. 

“All right. Pontmercy, you are an extraordinary fellow, you know, and your friendship has already proved exceptionally good value. Be warned though, you may be certain I shall think of this encounter of yours on otherwise empty nights, and I may have to trouble you for further details.” 

With a rush of grateful laughter, Marius nodded and watched Courfeyrac leave. Left to himself at the table, he drained his glass, taking comfort in reflecting that he surely had no further depths to fall to.

**Author's Note:**

> For within_a_dream, who gave lots of excellent prompts here: https://withinadream.dreamwidth.org/3335.html
> 
> I think this ended up more ridiculous than it started, but for Enjolras/Marius that’s probably about right. Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it!


End file.
